


Litany

by TheGoodDoctor



Series: Green Mountains [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Baby Frodo, Family, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 14:16:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14594802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoodDoctor/pseuds/TheGoodDoctor
Summary: Thorin closes his eyes and settles more comfortably on his heels. “Mahal,” he intones, “hear me. I come to you in worship and respect. I come to you without expectation or obligation. Creator, hear me, if you will.”





	Litany

**Author's Note:**

> i did do some research, but found nothing on dwarf/hobbit religious practice at all  
> so i made it all up

It has been an awfully long day.

 _A day for elf-time_ , Bilbo would say, if he were here, in that smiling way of his that makes Thorin melt a little bit, and he would set his thumb to the creases in the dwarf’s forehead and smooth them gently away - but Bilbo is _not_ here, and that’s most of the problem. Not only has the hobbit taken remarkably well to his duties as Consort under the Mountain, becoming quickly indispensable in a cloud of paperwork that leaves the dwarves scratching their heads to figure how they ever managed without him, his very presence in Erebor calms Thorin. He can’t sleep properly without the small form in his arms and Frodo is trying his best to be brave, distracting himself with lessons from Balin and Ori, but he misses his uncle and Thorin is trying to be there for him and run the mountain and-

The king digs his thumb into the space between his heavy brows and sighs. He puts down his pen with resignation and stands, gesturing vaguely at Dwalin, who - thankfully - has known him long enough to recognise this as “we’re done for today.” As Dwalin dismisses the various councillors and clerks Thorin drags his feet through corridors and up and down steps through the warren-like maze of the mountain, stomping on his heavy boots.

He nods at the guards he passes absently, waving away their sudden snaps to attention, wanting nothing more than to be in his rooms. Thorin leans against the door once he’s shut out the rest of the world and sighs the deep, lung-emptying sigh of one who has had to deal with the various hells of committees, legislation, taxation, and expectation. He shrugs off his heavy, fur-lined royal cloak and chucks it in the vague direction of a chair, missing entirely.

If Bilbo were here, he’d tut about throwing something around that’s worth a month’s labour until Thorin tidied it up and would reward him with a kiss.

Thorin leaves the cloak where it is. It doesn’t seem worth it.

Trying not to look at his empty, unmade bed, blankets the tangled evidence of a sleepless night, Thorin places his crown on a table and strips off his outer clothing until he’s wearing just trousers and a light tunic. His bare toes drum absently on the flagstones and he tries not to think about Bilbo’s complaints about the cold floor, even as he steps on the beautiful woven carpets Thorin had bought to appease him, the colours bright and pattern floral; as close to a piece of the Shire as could be found this side of the Greenwood.

He passes Bilbo’s desk and the unlit fire, unmoved by his body’s complaints of cold to bother, and enters a small alcove. Thorin settles, kneeling with his feet tucked under him with practised ease, and, back straight as a board and head up, begins to carefully unbraid his hair. He takes out his family braid and gently places one silver bead, then another in a neat line in front of his knees. Unravelled is the braid that declares him king, the one that calls him warrior, the one that names him leader. Slowly, with careful fingers, Thorin lays down each and every responsibility until he sits before a row of shining, silver obligations, bare of all but one.

Thorin rolls the last bead between his fingers, the thin, simple braid that runs from behind his right ear over his chest to end above his heart catching the light, shot through as his hair is with silver strands. Eventually he presses the bead to his lips and drops it back against his sternum. “Sorry,” he mutters with a glance skyward. “Not until he can put it back in.”

Thorin picks up the squat candle from the roughly cuboid rock altar before him, so fat that he can’t wrap his hand all the way around it and the wick is deeply sunken within it. His father and grandfather, in days of old, would have demanded a new candle by this point; the flame tends to gutter and it’s no longer a neat column at the top but a waving, curling mess. However, the lessons of Ered Luin have proven hard to shake and whilst there is use in the candle Thorin will use it. Besides, he thinks Mahal might like it’s resemblance, short, squat and somewhat ugly as it is, to the dwarves he created.

The candlelight flickers over the beads in their neat line as he replaces it, lit, on the altar and its light turns the courting bead in his hair gold. Thorin looks at its new colour in Mahal’s light. “I hope that means you don’t mind,” he says, brushing through his otherwise loose hair with his fingers.

All dwarves should come to Mahal in this way unrestrained, loose of the ties of family and clan and work - even lovers. But Bilbo is not here to put the braid back in Thorin’s hair, tongue slightly poking out of his mouth with concentration, unused as he is to doing anything with hair aside from washing it, and Thorin cannot bear to be without it when he must also be without Bilbo.

Thorin closes his eyes and settles more comfortably on his heels. “Mahal,” he intones, “hear me. I come to you in worship and respect. I come to you without expectation or obligation. Creator, hear me, if you will.”

Nothing happens. The candles don’t flicker ominously with the power of a heavenly figure, no breeze ruffles his loose hair, there is no echoing, sourceless voice telling him to “speak, Thorin, and be heard.”

Instead, the silence of the stones settles itself over Thorin like a blanket, a comforting stillness in which exists only Thorin, the person, and his god. Mahal listens and does his best to help his children, but all dwarves know that his help is as much in the comfort of his presence, the promise of his care, as it is in his intervention in their favour. It has been a long day, and Thorin needs this.

He begins as he always does, as he always has: “Mahal, keep my ancestors in your halls in good comfort and good spirits. Keep them from wandering and keep me in my time.” The words come as easy as breathing, phrases that he has known as long as he could talk and that he has spoken in this way for as long as he has been grown enough to pray in his own right. Traditional opening complete, he begins his new prayer.

“Mahal,” Thorin says, “I fear for the Mountain. Guide me to protect it, to do right by its people, to be the king that I should be. Guide my sister-sons to-” he pauses, narrowing his eyes at the flickering flame as he seeks the right word. “To be wiser,” he says in the end, thinking of the prank Fili had played upon a delegation from the Iron Hills and the reports he has been receiving from the Greenwood of Kili’s...preoccupation with Tauriel. “And to forgive me for saying as much. Keep Balin in his old age and preserve his mind, for he fears sickness and infirmity.” He pauses, deliberating, and gives in to the temptation to ask. “And because I need him, Mahal; he is wiser than I, and my education is not yet finished. Keep Dwalin’s axe arm strong, because otherwise he’d be insufferable,” he says, smiling, a joke with the only one who knows Dwalin better than he, “and keep Bofur from too much ale, because no one else can. Guide Bifur and Nori, bless Dori and Ori, preserve Oin’s health and give patience to his apprentices.” Thorin, like much of the rest of the mountain, cannot help but overhear their lessons, both parties yelling back and forth to be heard and understood: in hindsight, a cantankerous and mostly deaf old dwarf should not have been allowed to become the most qualified to teach new healers, but what Thorin cannot change he will plug his ears and withstand.

He works through his prayer and his Company in his head until he reaches his next subject, momentarily forgetting which of the litany of names that make up his closest friends he is yet to mention. “Bless Bombur and Gloin and their wives and children. Bless them with lasting happiness and more children, and bless those children with wise minds and crafty hands.”

Thorin looks at the flickering flame and the shadows it casts on the craggy walls of his small, private alcove. The shapes are always new, but the image of candlelit alcove and glittering beads is as familiar as his own hands. In Erebor of old, when he was young and still learning to speak to his god, he would kneel between his father’s knees, sheltered by his broad chest, and watch the light glimmer on Thrain’s many beads and Thorin’s one, in a line of its own. His father’s rumbling voice would speak the familiar words, slowly so that Thorin could stumble through them along with him, and then speak his litany of requests for his family, his home, his realm. Then it was Thorin’s turn, to ask for help with his schoolwork and for the protection of his playmates, getting a chiding grunt if he asked for toys or to win at games against his cousins and siblings. Then they would finish the prayer together and Thrain would braid his son’s family bead back into his raven hair, kiss his head and release him, now squirming from sitting still so long, to play with Frerin and Dis.

A sudden pang of longing shoots through Thorin’s chest with such intensity that he winces. All he wants in that moment is those he loves with him once more: Kili back from the Greenwood; Bilbo back from his trade mission to Dale; Thror, Thrain and Frerin back from the Halls of Mahal. He misses them all so much that it hurts. “Mahal,” he mumbles, “please.” He isn’t even sure anymore what, exactly, he is pleading for - possibly just for the hurt to stop.

Thorin takes a deep breath. If this is hard for him, in the halls of his youth, this must be impossible for Frodo. With this in mind, he begins again. “Protect Frodo as you would your own, Mahal, please; he is so young and so far from home. Keep him safe from harm and from hurt, guide him in his studies, give him wisdom. Make him feel safe here, ensure that he knows-” he cuts himself off, swallows thickly and tries again. “That he knows that I love him and treasure him. Guide him-”

A noise behind him interrupts him and he twists to look back into the room. Frodo is peering around the door, looking for something or someone. “Uncle Thorin?” he calls, not yet spotting his uncle in the alcove.

Thorin glances back at the candle. “Rather literal,” he mutters dryly. “In here, Frodo,” he calls to the boy.

The hobbit brightens upon spotting him in a way that is ridiculously endearing and more than slightly flattering, trotting across the room to where Thorin kneels. “Hello!” he says brightly. “What are you doing?” Frodo peers around the alcove, spotting the candle and beads.

“I’m praying,” Thorin explains, stroking one hand over the boy’s curls. His fingers effortlessly find the short braid and family bead that Frodo is so very proud of, comparing it at every opportunity to the ones worn by his uncles, cousins and friends.

Frodo tilts his head to one side. “Who to?”

“Mahal. Balin taught you about him in your lessons, remember?” Frodo nods eagerly, leaning into the gentle petting Thorin is absently bestowing upon his curls, and Thorin remembers being his age when Thrain first taught him to pray. “Would you like to pray with me, _kurkarukê_?”

Frodo grins and enters the alcove properly, nodding. Thorin lifts him gently under the arms to settle him in the space between his knees, Frodo’s back against his chest. “What do I have to do?”

“You kneel, like we are now, and take out your braids so that Mahal knows you come to him just as you are,” Thorin explains. He carefully undoes Frodo’s braid, handing him his bead. “Now you aren’t Frodo, nephew of Bilbo Baggins, you are just you.”

“Do I put it here?” Frodo says, placing it between his knees in a line all of its own.

Thorin nods, pressing a gentle kiss to his curls. “Then you light the candle, but I’ve done that already, so we can start to pray. Always begin by asking him to listen and to take care of those who have passed on and dwell now within his halls.”

Frodo’s voice is stuttering and hesitant as he copies the phrases Thorin teaches him, but it sends swells of pride through his uncle. He is teaching this boy something that his father taught him, that was taught to him by _his_ father, something that has been passed down through generations in this very way: small back to broad chest, shaky voice with confident tone, one long line of beads and one single, solitary bead.

Thorin picks up his prayer once more to show Frodo what to do. “Mahal, protect my sister. Keep her from hurt and harm and her grief. Help her to advise me. And for all our sakes, Mahal,” he says, voice warm with amusement and gently squeezing Frodo to let him know that he is allowed to be silly, sometimes, in prayer, “keep her from boredom or Dis shall menace the whole mountain.” Frodo giggles and Thorin presses his smile to the boy’s head, one arm half around him in an almost-hug. The hobbit dances his fingertips over the broad calloused hand as he listens, making his uncle smile. “Protect Bilbo whilst he is out of our sight,” he says, smile turning a bit sad. Frodo stills his hands in solemnity. “Keep him safe in Dale and on the roads. Guide him to wise actions and wiser words, and to success in his endeavours. And most of all, Mahal, let it be quickly and return him to us, because we miss him terribly.”

Frodo nods emphatically. “Yes, please.”

Thorin smiles, rubbing a thumb affectionately against the boy’s chest. “Your turn, _kurkarukê._ What do you want to ask Mahal for?”

Frodo sits very still, thinking hard, and Thorin is proud of him all over again. This culture isn’t the boy’s, not really - or at least, it doesn’t have to be. Frodo and Bilbo both would be well within their rights to reject dwarven culture, religion, and braids all, and Thorin would not begrudge them it, not ever. But they never have; both uncle and nephew have thrown themselves into the world that is now their home with great enthusiasm. Frodo likes nothing more than Balin’s lessons on the history of their people, eagerly telling his uncles about it over dinner, and Bilbo has accepted the change from green and growing to grey and stone with remarkable equanimity. Both Bagginses wear their beads and braids with pride: they both have an altered Durin bead, carefully etched with additional flowers to mark their roots, and Bilbo wears Thorin’s courting bead with more joy than the dwarf had ever dared hope for. Thorin loves them both until his heart could burst.

“Mahal,” Frodo begins eventually, “please help me learn, because I like it but there are lots of dates and some people have the same name and it’s hard.” Thorin stifles a small smile, recalling similar complaints from Fili and Kili when they were this young in Ered Luin, both wedged between Dis’ knees to learn from her. “Please look after all the dwarves in Erebor, and Kili in the Greenwood, and Tauriel. She was nice.” Thorin shrugs minutely; to be fair to the elf, he did sort of like Tauriel. “If you can, could you look in on the Shire? Look after the hobbits there, please, especially Sam and Merry and Pippin and Rosie, and stop Merry and Pippin getting into trouble, if you can. Please look after Uncle Bilbo and let him come home soon because I miss him.” Thorin squeezes Frodo slightly at that, in both commiseration and comfort. “Also, lastly, please look after my Uncle Thorin.” He looks down at the boy in surprise, but he is focussed on the candle flame before him, frowning with thoughtful sincerity. “He works really hard and he seems really tired. Make sure he’s alright, please.” Thorin rolls his eyes; whilst not inaccurate, being told so bluntly that he looks rubbish stings a little.

“Thank you,” he says anyway, because he is grateful and surprised and really quite touched that he is included in the prayers of this sweet young lad.

Frodo twists his head to smile up at him. “You’re welcome,” he says, ever polite. “I’m done; what happens now?”

“We finish the prayer. Mahal,” Thorin says, speaking slowly and waiting so that Frodo can echo him, “we came to you in worship and respect. We came to you without expectation or obligation. Thank you, Creator, for hearing our prayers and we ask that you answer them, if you will.” He waits for Frodo to catch up and then hugs him. “Done, _kurkarukê._ Blow out the candle.”

Frodo has to grasp it in both hands, fingertips just meeting around the thick stub of wax, and puff on it a few times, but he blows it out on his own and carefully replaces it on the altar. “Braids?” he asks, picking up his own bead.

Thorin hums confirmation and takes the bead from his tiny fingers, quickly braiding his family bead back into his mess of raven curls with practised ease. Frodo is beginning to wriggle, eager to get away, so Thorin presses a quick kiss to his head and releases him. The boy trots into the room and begins bouncing on the bed, giggling, so Thorin replaces his own braids as fast as he can before something or someone gets damaged.

He leans back to look into the room as he finishes, still kneeling. “Go and find out what’s for dinner, little one, and I’ll catch you up.”

Frodo bounces off the bed, ignoring his uncle’s brief look of fear, and lands without injury before charging out the door with a grin and tiny wave.

Thorin stands slowly, joints complaining at the length of time in one position in the unheated stone room. He rubs his courting bead with a small smile aimed at the altar, then turns to follow his nephew, shivering at a sudden gust of cold air.

* * *

Far below, at the gates of Erebor, a party on a surprise return from Dale knock on the heavy door. Bilbo shudders at a gust of wind, but nothing can dislodge his grin, for he is returning: to his home and his nephew and his love.

**Author's Note:**

> you know that scene in the sound of music where maria is praying for all the children and forgets one? and ends up going "well god bless whatshisface"?  
> the idea of thorin doing that with the company made me laugh for hours
> 
> thorin calls frodo kurkarukê, which means little raven


End file.
